JAKARTA, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Indonesia's government announced the ban of 477 websites, including Tumblr, from appearing in the homes and offices of its citizens due to concerns over pornographic content.
"I have signed off the letter and sent it to the Internet service provider. These websites should be blocked in the next two or three days," said Azhar Hasyim, e-business director at the Communication and Information Ministry.
The IP addresses of the banned websites have been blocked from appearing in Indonesia until the they cleans up their content. The companies were given the news at the same time as the publc so they weren't able to investigate and correct the issue right away.
Officials said the country's information and electronic law, which prohibits sharing posts containing vulgarity, was violated multiple times by the banned websites.
The largest company in the current ban is the social sharing website Tumblr. Indonesian officals ordered social networking sites to remove any emojis representing same-sex couples in early February.
Past Indonesian government website bans have included Facebook, Twitter, Netflix and Vimeo. All of these sites however, were banned temporarily over posts Indonesian officials deemed pornographic.
